July is typically one of the busiest months for the police department. With the 4th of July celebration and then the annual Sandy Mountain Festival just one week later, there is little time for other ongoing projects which generally get put on hold during this time.

Both events went very well and the public enjoyed coming out and having a good time in their community. The mountain festival parade used the same route through the down town core as years past but this may change in the future. Their are scheduled talks regarding this and the possible option of moving the parade route to a location outside the down town core. All of you will of course be kept up to date with this information. Every year it becomes more of a challenge to reduce Highway 26 to two lanes.

The public safety fee has been approved and I’d like to thank each and every one of you for your support during this difficult and challenging project. With that, we are now in the process of hiring two new officers. At the time of this writing, I have made tentative offers to two candidates and they are now in the back ground investigation portion of the process. I’m hoping to be able to give each candidate a final offer sometime in late August. The two new officers will fill the vacancies we have at the police department and we will once again be at full staff.

There has been some talk about one of my officers retiring early next year. Until an official notice is given, there is little to be done regarding filling the vacancy that will be left by this. I’m hoping that officer will make an official announcement soon so we can begin to plan for filling that vacancy once he leaves. Once again, I will keep all of you informed of this as I have more information to share.

I hope each of you are enjoying your summer.